


Wash

by aderyn



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Bad Weather, Caretaking, Evidence, Exhaustion, Injury, Laundry, Murder, Rain, Rivers of London - Freeform, The Work, Water, and what accumulates, in the flood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-26
Updated: 2013-08-26
Packaged: 2017-12-24 08:02:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/937556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aderyn/pseuds/aderyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s been raining for three days when Sherlock blows home with a torn and possibly bloody pair of trousers in his hands.</p>
<p>“Pants!” Sherlock shouts, springs up, shoulders his wet coat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wash

**Author's Note:**

> Kind of a companion for [London Drowning](http://archiveofourown.org/works/934282)

 

It’s been raining for three days when Sherlock blows home with a torn and possibly bloody pair of trousers in his hands.

John moves marginally.

“Just … you’re wet. And is that blood?”

“Quite possibly. Yes.”

“Is it yours?”

“No.”

“Oh, good then. I think.”

*****

It rains all night. Sherlock sits up with thread and stain and ocular.

The rain turns the streets to Thames and Tyburn, raises the subterraneans, rushes though the culverts, yawns like _cloaca maxima_ , calls from above, below _, Londinium, you are a disaster. Again._

Well no, that would be Sherlock.

*****

His hair’s still wet, whitecapped. He hasn’t moved since two when John slunk off to bed, heard upheavals, tried to sleep.

A yawn.

“Did you sleep at all?”

“Of course you didn’t.”

“Have you had anything to …”

“It’s rained enough to drown ...”

“Are you …”

Just pick up a wrist.

“Nope, not dead.”

_Thinking, John, thinking._

Carried along on these currents.

Well.

_You smell like daybreak. With a side of river._

*****

The coffee’s pale. The dishwater goes down the drain the wrong way; the news says more, the weather says more.

_What is it like to work like that, whirling away on the flood?_

_Not blinking._ _Barely breathing._

_All tributaries to the channel._

_Where hurts accumulate in pools._

_You and your blood._

 

 

 

* * *

“Pants!” Sherlock shouts, springs up, shoulders his wet coat.

“Are we going out?”

“Of course we are.”

They swim through, stratus and downpour, the drink weighing like lead.

Sherlock shrugs, shakes, slices through the alibi of a wary banker, watches his brow bead.

Doesn’t hear John say brilliant.

*****

“Oh,” Molly says, “oh.”

“Sit over there.”

Tosses them towels and shoos them. Patient.

“Bodies are washing up; it’s like Christmas around here!”

Sherlock twitches, sneezes, looks at his watchless wrist.

“If you don’t mind, Molly.”

It’s not that she does.

She brings them coffee sweet with grief.

Fogs the windows with the language of the dead.

*****

They slip from the morgue, darken like cement.

Sherlock gets them into a bind, a blind alley, an office with a leaky ceiling, ink like watercolor on files, lifts an old key.

Punches someone in the face. Leaves one for John.

Gets them wetter. Drips onto stained carpet.

Swims upstream. Hears a security guard call him something unkind.

Bleeds a bit.

Takes the scarf off, wrings it, puts it back on.

Doesn’t hear John say let me, and brilliant.

*****

Sherlock rubs his arms, coughs, leans, criminal grace, on brickwork.

“Water, John, is the nemesis of evidence.”

“For most people.”

_Let me look at you._

Sherlock leaps a lake.

Doesn’t hear John say brilliant.

 

 

 

* * *

 

Lestrade meets them with an umbrella, black-mooded and weary.

“You’re sure, Sherlock?”

“His wife isn’t in Corsica. She’s at the bottom of the Atlantic.”

“And you can prove …”

Rain runs off their noses, splashes onto their shoes.

“Already have.”

Eyeroll from Donovan, from Anderson. Faint thunder.

A flicker from Sherlock, not a tell.

Cigarettes tossed into gardens, laces washed into gutters, a brooding of old clothes.

The wet ends things come to.

*****

“All that from a bloodstain."

“Yes.”

“Are you alright?”

“Yes.”

“I’m never going to understand…”

“John.”

The rain stops, gasps, pounds anew.

_Londinium, you are awash._

_Again._

*****

In the cab Sherlock slumps.

John thumbs rain from beneath each eye.

_What is it like seeing._

_Always these things that won’t wash out._

Sherlock blinks awake.

"You're ..."

Damn.

_You just are._

*****

Home. Weapon away. Sheets outside, of water; inside, of clean cotton.

Sherlock drips, spits like wet wire, hisses and crashes and sparks.

*****

Rain beats on the roof and London sings trouble. Sherlock names all the rivers forwards and backwards and sketches sewers on a toilet roll and falls over on the duvet still damp from the shower. And John bends and takes one twist, one cloud, puts it back where it belongs.

There. Here.

In the morning the sky breaks shining over Baker, re-hearts the broken.

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> For a real (and lovely) Sherlock-and-clothing story: [ “One Man’s Trash Is...” by patternofdefiance](http://archiveofourown.org/works/934112)


End file.
